View article online
By Lindsay Christians
SHARON VANORNY
Triennial artist John Hitchcock, center with flower in his lapel, talks to guests at the 2025 Wisconsin Triennial opening. His piece, at left, is “Ceremonial (Pow-wow ribbon chair).”
SHARON VANORNY
From left, Triennial artists Taj Matumbi and Guzzo Pinc talk with UW art professor Doug Rosenberg in front of Matumbi's "Chicanery, 2025," an acrylic on canvas painting in the 2025 Wisconsin Triennial.
SHARON VANORNY
At far right, 2025 Triennial artist Kelli Hoppman looks at her piece, "The Inevitable," 2024, oil on panel, at the opening of the 2025 Wisconsin Triennial.
Like a parade float, brilliant ribbons beckon and wave from the apex of the Madison Museum of Contemporary Art.
“At first glance, you might recognize these folding chairs, familiar fixtures at picnics, outdoor concerts or Native American pow-wows,” said Sarah Ann Stolte, an associate professor of art history at Edgewood College, in a recorded response to the art.
“Here, the chairs are transformed. Suspended above you, they carry profound meaning … serving as stand-ins for individuals, ancestors and collective memory.”
Threads of color and transformation weave through the 2025 Wisconsin Triennial, which itself runs through Sept. 14 at the museum at 227 State St. More than 250 artists statewide applied to be among 24 chosen for the exhibition, a survey of Wisconsin art held every three years.
SHARON VANORNY
Matt and Anastasia Coppola attend the opening of the 2025 Wisconsin Triennial at the Madison Museum of Contemporary Art. Behind them is "Caboose," 2024, by Shane Walsh.
John Hitchcock, a professor of printmaking in the Art Department at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, pitched “Ceremonial (Pow-wow ribbon chair)” specifically for the Icon staircase in the museum’s west-facing atrium.
“It is a really important moment in this three-year cycle,” said museum director Paul Baker Prindle, who took over as the head of the museum in 2024. “We’re celebrating 20 years in the building. We’re coming up on 125 years as an organization.
“It’s an inflection point. So we wanted there to be some gravity to the project, a return to an earlier, more familiar model of the Triennial really taking over the building. … This was sort of a moment to look back and forward at the same time.”
The Wisconsin Triennial opened earlier this month, a few weeks ahead of Gallery Night, a twice-yearly, citywide art event scheduled for Friday, May 16. Visitors can view the Triennial that evening from 5-9 p.m., or Thursdays through Sundays during open hours.
SHARON VANORNY
Artist Christina Ruhaak (in yellow), creator of the sculptures on the table, speaks with exhibition curator Mel Becker Solomon, associate research curator at the Art Institute of Chicago, at the opening of the 2025 Wisconsin Triennial. The sculptures are made from crystal, textiles, fur and plastic toys.
Playful sculptures, detailed photos and a nude model
Art from the 2025 Triennial starts in the museum lobby with a trio of bright, collage-like paintings by Angelica Contreras, but the bulk of the work is in the Main Galleries. Sarah FizSimons’ video piece, “on water, waves, and architecture,” runs in the Imprint Gallery (on the second floor), and Hitchcock’s piece hangs in the atrium.
In those second floor galleries, a rhinestone-embellished photograph by Ho-Chunk artist Tom Jones, “Levi Blackdeer,” feels like a preview of the Madison Public Market, which will also include work by Jones. Guzzo Pinc’s pieces are hyper-local, inspired by Devil’s Lake State Park and the Isthmus.
“The texture of the rough jute peeking through gives the painting a sense of earthiness,” said U.S. Rep. Mark Pocan in his recorded response to Pinc’s “Isthmus.” (These recordings are all available as “Triennial Talks.”) “As I look at the quintessentially Wisconsin red barns and bright blue lakes, I’m reminded of warm summer days in Madison.”
MARIAH MONEDAArtwork by Guzzo Pinc, left, and Leslie Smith III is displayed in the 2025 Wisconsin Triennial at the Madison Museum of Contemporary Art.
Moving farther into the galleries, look up to spy a sculpted owl, made by Milwaukee artist John Riepenhoff to go along with his textural abstract piece, “Skies (early).” Works by Christina A. West — a kind of living sculpture called “Strut,” involving a nude model in performance — and ethereal photographs by Lauren Semivan share a feeling of intimacy and a smaller subsection of the gallery. (Find a schedule of “Strut” performances at mmoca.org.)
Some works are playful, like Nomka Enkhee’s sculptures made with found objects like aluminum cake pans and plastic racquets. Collage-style painter Shane Walsh, a Milwaukee artist, has “a hardcore, kind of ’90s alternative aesthetic,” Baker Prindle said.
The podiums for Michael Velliquette’s intensely intricate paper sculptures were designed just for this exhibition, in hues that match exactly. Cassie Marie Edwards’ oil painted, monochromatic flowers, rendered to look a bit like 3-D modeling clay, share that boldness.
SHARON VANORNYTriennial artist Theresa Abel gestures to her own work, "The Stone Path," 2018-2023, at the opening of the 2025 Wisconsin Triennial.
Other works feel connected to faith, and how people make meaning. Lois Bielefeld’s images, each packed with detail, focus on queer chosen family. Gerit Grimm’s rounded, wheel-thrown stoneware figures echo the sculptures of saints in gothic churches.
“I think there is a spiritual element to this whole project this year,” Baker Prindle said. “Meeting these artists, talking with them. … I’m not feeling the darkness from artists. There’s a resilience at play.”
Triennial, past and future: Three connected shows
A Wisconsin Triennial some 25 years ago was the first-ever museum show for Spanish-born painter José Lerma, who attended graduate school at UW-Madison.
The Madison Museum of Contemporary Art has dedicated the State Street Gallery to a new show of Lerma’s work, called “Domestic in a Foreign Sense” — a reversal of an early political reference to Puerto Rico, where Lerma grew up and now lives part-time. (He also teaches in Chicago.)
The art in this show references historical Catholic imagery and colonial Spanish governors of Puerto Rico, as well as intimate portraiture rendered on huge canvases. Lerma’s thickly layered impasto paintings can feel like wall sculptures, given the frosting-like quality of the paint. In one portrait, Baker Prindle pointed out just 16 visible brush strokes.
MARIAH MONEDALarge-scale paintings are displayed in "José Lerma, Domestic in a Foreign Sense," at the Madison Museum of Contemporary Art.
“He’s looking at these historical antecedents from neoclassical painting,” Baker Prindle said. “But also he’s heavily grounded in the concerns of mid-century painters.”
The museum owns two early works by Lerma, depicting fuzzy characters that “reveal questions that continue to interest him” about “archetypes, how we recognize types by physical attributes,” Baker Prindle said.
Lerma’s portraits, he added, “are specific enough that you know they’re portraits, not just figures, but a lot of the things that we might insist upon as specific to a person’s face are missing.”
While “Domestic in a Foreign Sense” underlines how critical a museum show like the Triennial can be to an early-career artist, in the Henry Street Gallery the museum looks at works those artists left behind.
“45 Years of Triennials: Acquisitions 1978–2022” includes photographs (ambrotypes, on glass) by John Shimon and the late Julie Lindemann, Chris Rowley’s acrylic yarn piece “Avoid the Hog Lump Provocateur” and Sonya Y. Clark’s “Wig Series.”
SHARON VANORNYGuests attend the opening of the 2025 Wisconsin Triennial at the Madison Museum of Contemporary Art.
What openness looks like
The museum may still be rebuilding some goodwill with Madison’s artistic community, after the last Triennial in 2022 ended with artists pulling their work from the walls and an open call for the previous director to resign.
In addition to artist talks during the run of these shows, educational opportunities and casual events on the roof, MMoCA is opening up its windows onto State Street. Baker Prindle’s team is in early stages of planning for a restaurant featuring Indigenous cuisine in the former gift shop space. And they have more work set for that Icon staircase/atrium, where Hitchcock’s chairs are now.
“We say we’re welcoming and inclusive,” Baker Prindle said. “I think you are beginning to see what it means to us when we say that.
“It is extremely unusual for a city of this size to have a museum like this,” he added. “It’s unusual to be doing the kind of quality programming that is available, almost always, for free. Our whole team, the board, the staff, want people to feel an understanding that what we’re doing here is for them … and that really everyone is very welcome.”
Lindsay Christians is an editor for the Cap Times. Lindsay oversees the newsroom’s coverage of food, arts and culture in the Madison region. Email story ideas and tips to Lindsay at lchristians@captimes.com.
Please consider supporting Lindsay’s work by becoming a Cap Times member or sponsor. Sustaining local journalism in Madison depends on readers like you.
2025 Wisconsin Triennial
Through Sept. 14
Madison Museum of Contemporary Art, 227 State St.
FREE
Food and culture editor